


Unprepared

by Bubblegum_monroe



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: F/F, Family Drama, Mafia AU, Pregnancy, Shovel Talk, going to ur estranged ex girlfriend bc she sent u an entire BABY, sending ur child to ur estranged ex boyfriend who left u
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-28
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2019-12-26 00:30:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18272159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bubblegum_monroe/pseuds/Bubblegum_monroe
Summary: There's always danger when you're part of a crime family.The risk of being arrested, shot, killed. Being caught. Being the scapegoat.Of your own family murdering you for not telling them of a spy in their midst, all because you were already in love with him.Of your family murdering you because you hid the fact you had a child.There's always danger when you're spying on a crime family.Being shot, killed, tortured. Of being caught and taking the fall.Of falling in love with the infamous criminal you're after because you had no idea that's who she was when you met her.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this whole au plotline is thanks to obbets and our inability to not make a million au's together

The hotel room walls are peeling, the light dim and yellow. It’s not an ideal place, but it’s hidden away and that is what matters.   
Her grip is tight on his hand, breathing laboured. She’s sweating, face contorted in pain and it  _ hurts  _ to see her like this here. She deserves better, a five star suite and a whole host of doctors. But this is the safest place right now. Ironically. 

“ _ I can’t do it _ ,” She gasps out, her grip tightening again and practically cutting off the circulation in his fingers. She’s in so much pain, and there’s no way they can ease it. He couldn’t afford to steal any anaesthetic, he didn’t have a way to administer it safely either. 

“You can, you  _ can _ ,” He squeezes back, propping another towel between her legs. Someone else should be with her right now, a professional, the  _ father _ . But he’s all she has, and he’s got to be the best he can be for her. “Come on, you just need to breathe, alright? Just. Breathe.” He can see the tears starting to roll down her face, hear the whimper in her throat between groans of strain and pain. 

“Hyp’ I-” She cries out, her other hand gripping the sheets of the hotel bed. Her back lifts up off the bed, he can see her knuckles and face go white. Every time this happens his heart stops, terrified that something is going wrong and he’s about to lose his sister. 

“ _ Breathe _ , goddamnit,” He mumbles and grabs one of her ankles to keep them down and out of kicking range of his face. He’s going to  _ kill  _ the one that did this to her and  _ left _ . He’s going to enjoy it too. He’s going to strangle him with his own two hands after telling him in  _ detail _ how fucked up this situation was. 

Her breathing picks up, but he knows she’s keeping it controlled. He looks up at her and sees her mouth a name, begging for someone to appear who wasn’t ever going to. 

_ Months before this, he waits in an alley. He’s angry. He’s so  _ angry _.  _ _   
_ _ He sees white hair move by the alleyway and he grabs on and pulls the figure to the ground. _

_ He’s a better fighter than Hyperion thought he’d be, considering his main skill seems to be running away. Punches down, fist colliding with his face and he keeps going. Grunting when the favour is returned. He sees blood on the other’s face and he grins beneath his bandana. _

_ A hand reaches out, fingers like claws, and catches hold of the bandana. Tears it off. _ __   
_ Hyperion runs. _ _   
_ __ Asra left staring after him, at the ghost of someone else’s face.

_ “Eos _ . _ ” _

It’s another hour before the baby is safely delivered, before Hyperion cuts the umbilical cord and cleans them up then hands them over to Eos. He watches her press her forehead to theirs, watches her smile. The tears that roll down her cheeks and splash onto their tiny, tiny body. They seem so small, smaller than they should be and he’s  _ scared  _ there’s something wrong with them. There’s no way they’re supposed to be that small, that defenseless. 

They open their eyes, and stark violet eyes look back at them both.    
His heart breaks that the Dogmatiko gold or silver isn’t there, but it’s safer that way. For the baby. For them. 

The baby wraps their tiny fingers around Eos’ smallest one, he sees the love ooze out of her. Thick, viscous love for a baby she has to give up.

She’s so pale when she hands the baby back to him. The smile disappears, replaced with sombre acceptance of what has to be done. She’s almost too quick to hold the baby out, like if she keeps them close to her for a second longer she’ll never let them go.

He opens his mouth to say something. To ask her if there really isn’t another way they could handle this. If they couldn’t just say they  _ found  _ the baby.   
He wants to ask if she’s sure about this.   
He closes his mouth and takes the baby from her. He knows there isn’t another way. He wraps the baby up in a blanket and knows that the best thing they could do for this child was to never see them again. 

The baby gets an arm out of the blanket and reaches for his hair, so close to tears when they can’t quite reach him. They are so  _ small _ , and he sees the similarities between the baby and their own baby photos. 

He won’t ask her if she’s sure about this, if she wants to try and keep the baby even if she has to hide them.   
He won’t ask, because she can’t answer that question in an acceptable way. 

“I’ll be back,” He says, knowing in a few hours he’ll have to travel across the country to deliver this baby. But first, the least he can do is get his sister a few things to make this easier on her. He holds the baby to his chest and pulls the blanket up to help hide their face. 

She says something and smiles. All he can do is stare.

This wasn’t  _ fair _ . Not on her, not on the baby, not on him.   
This isn’t how they should be spending the first few minutes after her child’s birth. She should be holding her own child, smiling and laughing. She should be  _ happy _ , celebrating. Counting fingers and toes. 

She shouldn’t be preparing to never see her own child again. She shouldn’t be facing the reality that she’s going to lose someone she has loved, cherished, nourished for nine long and hard months. Months of hiding, being afraid and making excuses. 

She should be thinking of how long it’ll take them to make their first steps. Whether they’ll say mum or dad first. She should be getting to know her own child, learning everything she can, and instead she’s giving it all up because someone else  _ ran away _ . 

He closes the door to the room, he hears her start to sob.

Yes.   
If he ever meets the father of this child again, he’s going to kill him.

He takes the baby with him, because they agreed that limiting contact between her and the child would help her move on.    
He looks down at the small thing writhing against his chest, and understands what she was afraid of.   
It’d be so easy to just not go, to just keep the baby.

In a few hours he boards a plane with the baby and everything they prepared for when he drops them off. She has written letters to this child, letters for birthdays and Christmases. Letters for years and years. Each stuffed with as much money as she could put inside. The birth certificate they forged was the most important one, he kept that on him at all times. 

She’d said it’d make getting documents as they got older easier.   
He knows it helps the father realise that this is  _ his  _ child,  _ his  _ responsibility now, where she can’t say it herself. 

There’s so much he doesn’t know. This is the best they can do.

They’d spent so much time trying to find him, without any of the help they had been used to. He had to watch his sister practically wilt the more they struggled.   
He understood why she was so afraid. He was the only one who really  _ could _ understand. 

Hyperion was well aware they were the only two they could  _ really  _ trust.   
That’d been proven when Eos fell in love and it fucked her over.    
She looked so sick these days, he was just hoping it was pregnancy strain. 

The entire flight he worries. Bouncing the baby in his arms to calm them when he has to but his mind is always preoccupied.    
He’s heard of postpartum depression, what if she develops it and doesn’t tell him? What if it’s worse without the baby around, what can he even do if they have to hide everything? Therapy isn't an option. Not for them. They'd never be allowed to admit that weakness. 

It's dark when the plane lands, and he disappears quickly into the crowd and shadows. Avoiding security like it was nothing, and it was. This was nothing he couldn't do, he just had to keep the baby quiet.

He steals a car. He'll abandon it later, steal another one to get back. 

It's unassuming really.

The house. It's a sweet little place, ordinary looking with a nice garden out the front and a tree that towers over from the back yard. 

Eos would like it, he thinks. She doesn't seem like it, act like it, but he knows his sister and she would adore to have picket fences and a little family. Always acting rough as guts, no one would pinpoint it really.

He wonders if  _ he _ figured it out. Probably not, he doesn't expect him to have any sort of emotional intelligence to be able to.

It's unfortunate he is their best option.

He places the basket with the baby inside on the doorstep, tucking them in to make sure they were warm and arranging Eos’ stacks of letters around them. Then, laying the birth certificate envelope on top of the baby. This will be the last time he ever sees them if they’re lucky. He runs his hand over their tiny head, looks over their chubby little body.    
Eos should be here. 

_ “You’re the best at keeping unseen, Hyp’ _ ,”  _ She says as she writes another letter, a twenty first birthday one, her hands are shaking. He knows she wants to be there. “It just makes more sense for you to go alone, besides, I’ll be fresh from  _ doing  _ the birthing. I’ll be a liability.” _

_ He’d just nodded. She was right. But it doesn’t make it fair to her. _

He presses his fingers to their tiny chest, keeping gentle.   
“You are the most important thing in the world to your mother and I,” He whispers to them, and he hopes that even if they’re so young they’ll understand what he means. “This is for the best.” They won’t ever know what it’s like to be a Dogmatiko, they won’t know the culture that defines them. They won’t ever know that their mother is a criminal, that their mother’s entire  _ family  _ is criminals. Good ones too.

He stands up and knocks on the door. Hard. Loud.

Hyperion watches from across the street when he opens the door.   
His name is Asra, and just over six months ago he left Eos without a word in the middle of an event they’d been invited to.   
It was a mob party, yes. And Hyperion has no doubt he realised that Eos was a criminal in the middle of it and left. Not a word of goodbye, he just left.

For six months his sister had been heartbroken, wondering how he could stop loving her so quickly. She’d cried so much over him.

He didn’t know what to say to it all. 

Now he had to watch him take the baby his sister had spent  _ nine months  _ looking after and keeping safe at her own personal risk. 

He watches Asra bend down, and pick the basket up and take it inside. 

He doesn’t even know how to look after a baby. He didn’t spend those six months after he ran away researching, he didn’t spend those six months learning about how to deliver a baby so Eos could have someone with  _ some  _ experience tending to her.  _ Asra  _ hadn’t spent six fucking months trying to be everything for Eos when she had no one else,  _ Hyperion  _ had.    
It wasn’t Hyperion’s place to, it should’ve been Asra from the beginning. And now he was reaping all the reward for his sister’s hard work.

Yes.   
If Hyperion ever sees Asra again, he’s going to kill him.

He gets back onto a plane to head home to Eos. All he can think about is the baby. Whether Asra would treat them well, if he’d even deign to keep them.   
He holds Eos when he gets home as she cries. He hands her a bottle of whiskey and strokes her hair as she downs it.

She says that she loves Asra, that she misses her baby.    
She thanks him for everything he’s done, and that she is so sorry.

All he can do is hold her until she falls asleep in that dingy hotel room.    
He doesn’t have the words in him to comfort her.

..

It’s too early in the morning for someone to be knocking at his door like this. He’s already stayed up too late, but having someone so  _ insistent  _ on knocking at three AM was icing on the cake. 

He tosses off his covers, floor cold against his feet, and heads for the front door. Hand rubbing at his eyes, it had better be something good. Like, a murder.   
He can hear crickets and other insects outside, the street is dead quiet. The knocking has stopped, but he still checks. 

There’s a baby at his doorstep. With a thousand envelopes surrounding it.   
He feels bad for the poor thing, and looks for a sign of a parent nearby. He kneels down, the poor thing pulling an arm out of the blanket they’d been tucked into and reaches for him. He holds a finger out for him as he looks over the envelopes. 

His blood freezes when he sees one of them has his name on it.   
He picks the basket up and brings it inside, the baby cooing and giggling at him.

It’s then that he notices the eyes.   
_ His  _ eyes. Violet and vibrant, so big for such a small thing. They giggle at him and reach up to try and grab at his hair or face. He’s just frozen.

“ _ No, _ ” He whispers to himself and plucks the baby from the basket. They wave their arms about when he picks them up and holds them to his chest. They’re so small, smaller than he expected a baby to actually be. “Oh,  _ no.  _ No, no,  _ Eos. _ ” He uses one hand to rip open the letter addressed to him and pours the contents out.

A birth certificate, a wad of hundred dollar bills and a small note.   
It’s Eos’ hand writing. It only says ‘ _ please _ .’ He pushes it to the side for now, ignoring the implications for something more straight forward.   
Like the birth certificate. The birth certificate listing him as the father and a stranger’s name as the mother. The handwriting on it isn’t Eos’, a stranger’s. But it’s similar enough.

He doesn’t understand. 

He left six months ago, for the baby to have  _ his  _ eyes and be born…   
He traces his finger over the document, looking for the date.   
Yesterday.   
_ Yesterday _ . 

It doesn’t make sense, she’d have had to been already pregnant when he left-   
He tightens his grip on the baby.   
She was pregnant when he left. She was  _ pregnant  _ and he  _ left _ .

It isn’t possible.

He sits down at his kitchen table and pulls out the rest of the letters. All numbered, dates to open them on. The baby’s birthday, Christmas. He presses down gently on them, more cash stuffed inside, a few with hard bits and pieces. Jewellery he assumes.

He doesn’t want her money.   
He doesn’t even know what is going on. Doesn’t know why this is happening  _ now _ . Surely she would’ve tried to contact him first?

No. Of course she wouldn’t have. She would never have of given him that courtesy.   
_ There’s a small voice in the back of his head that tells him he would’ve just run away again if he heard her voice. _ _   
_ _ He wouldn’t have heard her out and he knows that _ .

He needs answers, but there’s no letter for him to give him any. He isn’t about to go tearing through all the others either. Not yet. 

The baby shrieks, laughs, and the reality of this being  _ his  _ baby hits him.   
He never even had gotten around to thinking about children with Eos when they were together, nothing beyond making a mental note to pick up a plan B pill for Eos in the morning before they went to bed. Now one had been dropped on his doorstep without a single warning or forethought about whether he’d be capable on his own. It was just like her to do this. 

He has to talk to her, get some answers.

He’ll have to right a letter.

Later, he’s back in bed curled around the baby-  _ his  _ baby. Their hair dark and downy, the same black as Eos’ own hair.    
He wonders if they’ll look more like him, or more like Eos.

Something in his chest twists. Tightens and aches. 

He sends letters and he never gets a reply.

‘ _ What do you want me to do? _ ’ He writes,  _ ‘I’m not prepared for this, why didn’t you tell me? _ ’

In truth, she might not have of gotten the letters at all. But it’s been weeks, and he still hasn’t figured out a proper lie to tell to store clerks when he goes in to buy baby formula, diapers and clothes. 

They all ask if he’s out shopping for his wife, for his girlfriend, while she’s at work. He can’t tell him he doesn’t even know where Eos is. 

He buys a car seat, and a good few weeks worth of formula and diapers.    
He has to go to her. She couldn’t just  _ leave  _ their baby with him and not explain what was going on. Not after everything.

_ “Come and share this painting with me, _ __   
_ Unveiling of me, the magician that never failed…”  _ _   
_ __ Her voice echoes throughout the room, her eyes locked onto him. If not for the fact he was intimately, paranoidly, aware of every other person in the room, he could get lost in that voice. Those eyes. 

_ “This deep sigh, coiled around my chest, _ __   
_ Intoxicated by a major chord, _ __   
_ I wonder,  _ _   
_ __ do I love you? Or the thought of you?”

_ She extends her arm out as she sings, a simple motion to anyone else but to him he can picture himself taking her hand. Wrapping his arms around her, body pressed to his through twirls and dips and the fun of dancing to her voice. _

_ “Slow, love, slow… _ _   
_ _ Only the weak are not lonely…” _

_ He sees the shadow of a man on the balcony, at these parties he’s always there. Out of sight, never revealed to the rest of the party guests. _ _   
_ _ Asra knows who he  _ might _ be, and his nerves increase whenever his attention is brought to Eos. So worried for her safety at these places, but he can never find a good reason to convince her to stop accepting these requests. _

_ “Southern blue, morning dew  _ __   
_ Let-down-your-guards,  _ I-love-you’s _ …”  _ _   
_ __ Her voice takes on a certain familiar tone, knowing in that line she’s speaking directly to him. The voice he hears before she pulls him into their bedroom, presses him against their kitchen counter. He inhales sharply, his fingers gripping onto the edge of the table. Beginning to relax, to forget everyone else. 

_ His eyes follow the deep neckline of her dress, how it exposes her abdomen. Follows it back up to her shoulder, his name on display in simple but pretty script. Follows it further to the necklace around her neck. He’d given it to her last Christmas, a piece of red jasper sitting as the centerpiece. When he thought of her, that stone called to him. _

_ It wasn’t her favourite colour, and he didn’t understand how the purpose of the crystal could help her. _ _   
_ _ But it looked beautiful on her, and she hadn’t taken it off since he’d given it to her. _

_ When he’d watched her get dressed before they left, all he could think of was how eager he’d be to push the skirt up around her waist when they got home and fuck her against the door. _

_ Now he’s not even sure if he’s going to last to the end of the party before he pulls her away out of sight to have his way with her. _ _   
_ _ To have her return to the party with smudged lipstick and hickeys over her neck, running down her chest. Hair a mess, he wants her to walk back with his cum dripping down between her legs. Mind dazed, he wants her to know how much he loves and  _ wants  _ her. He wants everyone in this place to know exactly who she is with and how good he treats her. _

_ A large hand claps down on his shoulder, startling him out of his lustful daydreaming.  _

_ “She sing beautifully, does she not?” A barrel chested man who looks like he walked out of a weight-lifting competition stands at Asra’s shoulder. Immediately his nerves return as the man sits down on a stool next to him. _

_ “She does, she really does,” She sings in the apartment sometimes, just for the two of them, while she does something. Laundry, or the dishes. Silly things sometimes, other times love songs to distract him before she splashes him with dish water and tries to run away. Every time he grabs her around the waist and swings her around, holding her so she can’t get away as he splashes her.  _

_ “She spends a lot of time with you, I’ve noticed, she speaks highly of you.” the man pulls a cigar out, and it’s here Asra recognizes him. He’s been arrested before, Asra’s seen his files. Quite the executioner for the family. He shifts uncomfortably. “You take care of her, eh? Or we take care of you.” He claps his hand on Asra’s shoulder again, laugh hearty and loud but he knows he really means it.  _

_ He looks over to Eos, taking a band member’s hand to help her off of the stage. She looks over to him and smiles, her love for him radiates out. He doesn’t need to hear the words to feel it. He just knows. _

_ His voice is very quiet, face somber. “I could never hurt her.” He wouldn’t dream of it, couldn’t stand it if he did. He loves her, every inch of her. Every word that comes from her mouth and her moments of being completely dense when something isn’t always spelled out blatantly for her. He loves her jokes, her jabs and taunts. He loves it when she surprises people, even him, with brilliantly worded facts or explanations of complicated subjects one didn’t expect her to know about. He loves when she sits him down to cut his hair or do his eyeliner for the day.  _

_ He loves to watch her get ready for the day, loves to watch as she swears and curses when she burns herself putting hot rollers into her hair. Loves when she just decides to laze about in bed, when she spends a day where her moments out of bed are to make a face mask, go to the toilet, or make food. Loves to spend those lazy days with her. _

_ The man beside him lights his cigar and grins at him before he inhales. “Ah! You’ll do just fine with us, kid.” His hand raises in a wave towards Eos as she makes her way over, she grins at the sight of them both. When she reaches the table she kisses the air on either side of the man’s face. They’re familiar.  _

_ “Akala,” She grasps one of the man’s hand, squeezing once before letting go. That must be the man’s name, he presumes. “Are you bothering my lover boy?” _

_ “Ha! Making good friends with him, Mikró korítsi. We get along very well.” She hums at that, amused but not entirely believing him. She moves around the table to stand by Asra’s side. Her arm wraps around his waist, leaning into him. He tugs her close. If not for their close witness he might be whispering to her what he'll do to her tonight. _

_ She kisses his cheek, then his jaw. “Can you grab us a drink, habibti? I want to have a word with this man here about his manners.” His blood runs cold. He couldn't leave her with him. Not  _ this  _ one. _

_ “Don't worry, girl, I'll leave you two now,” he turns to Asra, still grinning. “You tell them, you tell then at the bar, that Antoni sent you for free drinks rest of the night. Yeah? Just between us friends.”  _

_ He goes to grab drinks from the bar for both of them, her kiss to his cheek still lingering on his skin and the promise of a  _ long  _ night once they get home is still on his mind. He watches her from his place by the bar as the bartender grabs their drinks. The backless dress and the delicate curls she put into her hair. With his eyes he traces the henna that runs up her arms and disappears under her dress. He cannot wait until the party is over and he gets to run his tongue over those patterns that he knows go over her breasts.  _

_ “Wow! She really  _ does  _ sing like a nightingale!” _

_ It’s an innocent comment.  _ _   
_ _ Not one he can just ignore. _

Nightingale.

_ He came to this city to track down a criminal, the Nightingale, who had proved too dangerous and elusive. He’d begged to be put on the case by his organization and now had spent years here working to find them. _

_ Eos.  _

_ He’d poured over the guest lists to each party she’d taken him to. He assumed she was just a particularly popular musician that got referred and rehired again and again. They seemed so fond of her, he just. _ __   
_ He just hadn’t imagined she’d be part of all of this.  _ _   
_ __ He’d poured over guest lists again and again and never found a suitable candidate for the Nightingale. 

_ Until now. _

Eos is the Nightingale.

_ The bartender puts their drinks on the table and he just leaves them there. Brushing through the crowd and heading for the exit, body on autopilot.  _

_ Eos is the Nightingale. _ __   
_   
_ __ Had she been playing with him? Jerking him around like a puppet on a string?

_ Eos is the Nightingale. _

_ She must know about what he did. That he was here in this city to spy and arrest her. _

_ Eos is the Nightingale. _

_ His chest feels tight and there’s a pain right in the centre.  _ _   
_ _ He’s heartbroken really. _

He has to go find her if she’s not answering him, and the baby just has to come with him. So he prepares for that.    
He gets into the car and in the baby seat,  _ his  _ child bounces up and down excitedly shaking a toy he’d bought so he could use his ring of keys. Their bright eyes staring at the front of the car, his eyes looking right back at him. 

So he drives, and drives.   
It gives him time to think.

To think about what to say when he sees her. What he even can say.   
‘ _ Sorry about disappearing after finding out you lied to me for years but what the fuck is with you dropping this baby on me? _ ’   
That’d go down so well. 

He reaches his hand back when he reaches a long stretch of road with no other cars around, and for a second lets the baby shake around his finger. They’d gotten bigger over the weeks, cheeks still chubby.    
They were adorable really.

And his. Apparently.    
His heart twisted in his chest when he thought about it. It didn’t seem real, didn’t seem possible.    
Maybe it was just a joke? A similar seeming baby had been dropped on his doorstep by them for a prank?

That didn’t seem likely either. But he couldn’t think of any other reasons this would be happening.   
He couldn’t think of any other reasons as to why Eos wouldn’t have been there  _ with  _ the baby. Did The Family mean that much to her, or was it something else?   
Maybe she thought he didn’t want to see her. 

It takes a few days for him to find them. It feels. Odd. Going back to the same place he left all those months ago. Feels odd to pull up on the curb and stare up at the old apartment building, knowing which window used to be his.    
The baby sleeps in the booster seat. Quiet, stirring only a little when he slowly pulls up. He can see she’s home, the lights are on and he sees a silhouette move passed the window. She’s not getting away from this, he’s going to have answers this time.   
He’s going to actually confront her this time.

He gets out the car and swaddles the baby in the same blanket they’d been delivered in before he heads inside. 

He’s not expecting her to be happy or ecstatic to see them. Shocked, for sure.

He knocks on the door hard, and waits. There’s a pair of voices inside and for a moment his stomach flips with the idea that she might’ve moved on.   
That maybe she sent the baby away because she met someone else. He steels himself. It wasn’t his business what she did, only if it included the baby. 

A man opens the door, taller than him. He looks just like Eos, hair black and blue and pulled up into a messy bun. A lesser person might think he was intimidating.   
He must be a brother, or a cousin. Which means he is also part of The Family. Their parents must be too.

Eos appears not too soon after at her brother’s side.

Their faces turn a ghostly colour, absolute terror colouring their expressions. He can see Eos visibly tense up and her brother’s knuckles go white with the grip he has on the doorknob.    
They’re afraid of something.   
Of him? That wouldn’t make sense.

The baby starts to wake up, beginning to make the starting whimpers leading to a crying session.   
Eos moves first, grabbing onto Asra’s arm a little too tightly and drags him inside. Hyperion shutting the door firmly behind him.

“ _ What are you doing here? _ ” Eos whispers in a harsh tone, not waiting for an answer before she turns to her brother. He nods at her and pulls a gun from his belt, cocking it.

“I’ll make sure no one saw,” There’s fury in her brother’s eyes. He shoots a withering, deadly glare towards Asra before he leaves his-  _ Eos’  _ apartment.   
He opens his mouth to say something to her, to ask what is going on, but goes silent when he sees the look in her eyes. The slight raise of her hands.   
She’s staring at the baby with a look he can barely describe.   
Want, fear, need.

She shakes her head, hands running through her hair and heads deeper into the apartment. He can only follow suit in silence.

Her eyes always wandering back to the baby. The way he bounces them to try and stave off their crying spell, their chubby little cheeks and the way they jam their fingers into their mouth. Every so often she almost reaches for them, but jerks herself back.    
Her heart is breaking so visibly, and watching it breaks his too. 

He holds the baby out to her, drawing their attention to their mother. They giggle and reach out. It couldn’t hurt, just for a few minutes. He can see that she wants to,  _ needs _ to. That she needs it more than anything else right now.

Her hands tremble when she reaches out, hesitant and unsure if she should, but once she touches them she draws them quickly to her chest. Her lips curling into a smile. Golden eyes lighting up as the baby smacks their hand against her chin.   
Her shoulders hunch up and shake when she starts to cry. Her jaw clenching so tight to keep herself from making any sort of noise at all.

Beautiful Eos, lovely Eos, his poor,  _ poor  _ Eos. He can see her tears and how her body shakes from them, but he can barely hear a sound coming from her.    
She is in so much pain, because of  _ this,  _ yet unwilling… Unable? To express it.

He can’t help himself. He can’t stand to see her like this and finds himself reaching out to her. Not realising until he’s touching her shoulder.   
He can’t just.   
Touch her anymore. He doesn’t have that right anymore, he  _ left _ and forfeited it.    
She’s not  _ his  _ anymore.

He just doesn’t want to see her so sad.

But she leans into his touch, shifting the baby to wipe at her own tears and he can’t  _ stand  _ it. He wraps his arms around her, pulling his wif-   
No.    
Girlfr-   
No.   
He pulls Eos close to him. Their baby between them, protected and safe.  _ She’s  _ protected and safe. 

There’s a weight in his chest that lifts, a pain and tightness that eases when he brings his arms around her. It has been there for six months, beginning and counting down the very moment he learned who she was. Since the moment he looked at her face and saw the criminal he’d been chasing down for years.

She sent him their baby, with the intent for him to raise it alone.   
But the idea of it, the idea of watching  _ their  _ baby grow up without her left such a sour taste in his mouth

He doesn’t want to. Not without her, he won’t  _ leave  _ again.

They can almost pretend this is normal. That they’re a normal family that deserves white picket fences, a little nuclear unit. Just them, their baby. No need to worry about spy organizations and mafia families. 

The baby tugs at Eos’ hair and she laughs, it’s the most beautiful sound he has heard in six months.   
She looks up at him, there’s still tears steamrolling down her face but she is still so beautiful.   
He can feel tears build up in his own eyes. But his chest is full and warm with a love for her that didn’t dissipate or leave, no matter how hard he tried to make it go. He brings his hand to her face and uses his thumb to brush her tears away.

“I missed you, Eos.”

“I missed you too.”

..

She had missed him. For months and months. She’d prayed he’d come back, that she could say she was  _ sorry _ .    
But he didn’t come back, not until she sent an entire baby to him.

“I didn’t think you’d come back.”

“I wanted to, I wanted to.”    
_ He’d been so heartbroken, so betrayed, when he found out. But, in the face of the tiniest little life they’d made together, it didn’t seem to matter. _ __   
_ He hadn’t even known them for a month, and already he’d do everything for them. _ _   
_ __ She’s the Nightingale, but she’s Eos first.

In the back of her mind she can hear Hyperion’s voice.  _ If he wanted to come back, he would have, Eos _ . But she accepts it as is anyway. She loved him, he wanted to come back.   
He just needed encouragement.   
He was just running late.

"I waited, I kept waiting and now you're here it's-" Eos takes a breath. If her parents found out about this... "You shouldn't be here. It's too dangerous for you two."    
If her parents found out about them, that they were  _ here _ .   
They’d kill all four of them.

"I... I'm sorry. I found out about- well." He falters, and stops. She knows. And it just doesn't seem to matter any more.   
"How could I stay away, Eos?"

“Because you need to, Asra," She looks down at their baby, she cannot bear to think about what her parents would do to it but she knows she has to. To remind herself of the consequences. "To keep yourself safe, to keep them safe. You have to go back." If he didn’t, if he got  _ caught _ . Her parents would know everything. That she hid a spy from them, that she had a  _ baby  _ with said spy. That Hyperion helped her cover it up.

And even if they didn’t kill or hurt all four of them for it.   
She wouldn’t let them do to her baby what they did to her and her brother.

She can see the hope in his eyes, the rekindling of what they had before he left. She can see bursts of stars from burst excitement and adoration in his eyes and it breaks her  _ heart _ . She can’t let him stay and she can’t go with him.

"Come with me, then? You don't need to stay away. Be with  _ us _ ." His eyes are shining with the hope and promise of their prospective life together. With the baby.  _ Their  _ baby. And she wants to. She wants to go with him and live out a proper,  _ normal _ life. It’d be so beautiful.   
But she and Hyperion found him once, without help from The Family. They could be found again if they knew and looked for them.    
He’s offering her everything she wants but it isn’t  _ fair _ . She can’t say  _ yes. _

“I-, Asra, I can’t. If I’m with you then- Then that’s too dangerous. They’ll look,  _ they’ll  _ find out.” She can’t let her parents get anywhere near her baby, or Asra.   
She knows too well what happens to children her parents have control over. 

"Who? Who will look? The Family?"   
Asra ducks his head to kiss the downy hair of their baby, breathes in their soft skin. "What about us, Eos?"   
He looks up at her, twin violet eyes blinking wide at her.   
How can she say no to  _ those  _ eyes? He’s always made her so weak.

“It’s worse than just The Family, it’s-” She doesn’t want to even say it. They'll hurt Asra, they'll hurt her. She doesn't know whether they'd kill the baby or do what they did to her and Hyperion. She looks at him, and their baby. She can't let that happen.    
"I am thinking of us, Asra," She hasn't stopped thinking of them and their baby. "That's why I- That's why I sent them to you, away from me and-" She wants to tell the truth, all of it but she can't. "And them. I love you two, Asra, with all my heart. That's why you need to be safe."

She can see the heartbreak in his eyes, the confusion. She’s hurting him again. She’s  _ hurting  _ him again. She’s always hurting him, but this time she  _ needs  _ to. For his own sake. She wants to run off with him, he has to know that, she just can’t.    
She wants to marry him, and raise their baby with him. She just  _ can’t _ . 

"We can be safe. Together. We can be safe."

"If I disappear, they'll look for me. They'll find you. They won't stop until I'm dead, or you are. There's so much at risk, so much you don't know."

"Tell me, Eos. Let me in. I want to see them safe as much as you do, and I can't do that if I don't know the full story. Let me in." He brings his hands to her shoulders, holding her in place. Desperate to know. All she can do is close her eyes. He's right, he should know. But it's  _ her  _ story, it's  _ Hyperion's _ story. No one else but they have the right to it. Can't they choose when to share it, even in these situations? 

"My parents-" Eos starts, and she's afraid once again. She lowers her voice. "My parents, if... Asra, you have no idea what it was like to be raised by them. To be afraid of them. If they find out, they have the entire Family to hunt all four of us down. Hyperion for helping, me for hiding the two of you. They'll hurt us, and that's the best we could hope for." Her father's fists and their cheeks, her mother's voice going shrill and yelling at them for something that wasn't their fault. "I can't- I can't let our baby know that life. I don't want you to know of that life."

He kisses her cheek. "I understand." He doesn't, not really. But he understands enough. He understands fear, and he understands the burning need to see the baby safe.   
But he also  _ knows _ that he should be with Eos. They should be together. With their baby.   
"What if you died?" he asks, eventually.

"Well, when people die, Asra, they tend to be dead." Her tone turns sarcastic. What kind of question was that? A ridiculous one. She’d be  _ dead _ . What, is he planning on killing her now?    
  
He can't help but laugh, and kiss her. " _ Thank _ you for that, darling. What would  _ they _ do, if you died?"

_ Darling _ . She should be worried about being caught but that one word makes her giddy. "Loot my corpse. Pretend to be sad and forget about- Oh." She sees now. It’ll be interesting to pull off… But, might work.

"I told you. We can be safe. Together." He wraps his arms around her, and his baby, and wonders if it would be too much to propose right there. She'll have to leave everything behind. For him, for their baby, it'd be more than worth it. They can have a life together. 

"We can be safe... We just have to kill me, but inefficiently." 

He laughs, and it's the happiest sound he's made in six months. "Inefficiently," he repeats. "I like that.”

..

He wasn't happy about it.

About how  _ easy  _ it was for Asra to worm his way back into his sister's life and heart. How forgiving she’d become when it came to a boy with a pretty face. She'd listened to people beg for their lives and families, and shot them anyway, yet now here she was holding onto the baby they'd done so much to protect and letting Asra  _ touch _ her.

He shouldn’t be touching her. Not after leaving, not after breaking his sister's heart. Not after risking that baby to come here. 

Not after suggesting they  _ fake  _ his sister's  _ death _ . If they got caught it'd be so much worse for all of them. 

“ _ We'll talk more about it later,”  _ She'd said, the light in her eyes having of finally returned after six months of loneliness. It shouldn't have been Asra that brought that back. It should’ve been  _ family _ , or she should have met someone new. Someone like them, who would understand her.    
No, instead they were all stuck with a coward.

Hyperion, right now in particular, was stuck with him. In traffic. 

“ _ We need more baby formula- how did you forget to bring more- doesn’t matter. Hyp’ could you?” _

_ “Of course. He can come with me to get it. _ ” 

He should’ve said he’d go alone because he doesn’t even want to look at Asra. He has no doubt he can tell too.    
He rests his head in one hand, the other on the steering wheel. He shouldn’t have left Eos alone. She’s more than capable, but she’s his  _ sister _ . His  _ twin _ . He shouldn’t have left her alone, but he needs a moment with Asra. 

“So, you came back,” He begins, finally moving forward a few meters until traffic came to a halt again. “Bit late, aren’t you?”

“I wanted to-”

“I don’t give a fuck about what you  _ wanted _ to do. I’m not my sister, the point is, is that you  _ didn’t _ .” He left her. Alone. He left her pregnant and alone. As far as Hyperion could see, he didn’t  _ care about that. _ Eos had been heart broken, and he  _ knew  _ the only thing that kept her healthy was that baby.    
Then they had to give that baby away and it was Hyperion’s job to make sure she got out of bed. She shouldn’t have had to need that. “She missed you.”

Asra goes quiet, and Hyperion can’t tell if it’s because he’s getting angry at him or if it’s because he actually does feel bad.

“I know.”

“Let’s go on a detour,” He flips his indicator on and moves off the main road first chance he gets. He doesn’t answer Asra’s questions as he drives down small side streets to a shadier and more shabby part of the city.   
The sort of area people go to when they want to disappear. Or when they want to hide something. 

He pulls up to a shitty looking motel, looking like the wind could blow it down with the slightest push. If he squinted he could almost see a pair of collapsed rooms towards the back. The place looked like it was a cesspool. Or was just as bad as one.

“Thought you might like to see this place,” He rolls down the window and leans out of it to light a cigarette, inhaling before he speaks again. “This is where we had to go so Eos could give birth. Room was disgusting when we got here, but we made do.” The sheets had been bloody and Hyperion burnt them rather than leave any evidence behind. He’d spent so many months researching everything he could because he  _ knew _ they’d never find someone to help them that they could trust. 

He’d been so certain her heart would give out more than once. 

He looks at Asra from the corner of his eye. Expression coloured with horror, the blood draining from his face. 

“I didn’t know… I didn’t realise, I-” 

Asra cares. And Hyperion hates that  _ more _ . It makes his fingers twitch, he just wants to hit Asra for everything he’s done. He reaches towards him, and grabs a fistful of that white hair and yanks it towards him. Cigarette so dangerously close to Asra’s skin. He knows he can feel the heat from it, and he’s so tempted to drive it right into those violet eyes.

“If you do this to us again,” Us. Because it had to be ‘ _ us’ _ when Asra left. Because Hyperion was the only person she could trust. Because Hyperion had to take on a role that wasn’t his so that his sister wouldn’t be  _ alone _ . “I’m going to make you regret ever coming to this city in the first place.” He slowly presses the cigarette against him, just behind his ear. He hears Asra hiss out and pushes him away. He flicks the cigarette out the window before driving off again.   
He’s not satisfied.   
But he got to hurt him.

“I’m not going to leave again, you want me to, but I’m not  _ going _ to.” 

“You’re right. I don’t want you here. But now that you are, I can’t let you leave without making sure you know how much you fucked up my sister,” He finds them a way to a supermarket, pulling into the parking lot. “You fucking- You  _ ruined _ her. You have no idea how upset she was, how many times she called me crying in the middle of the  _ night _ . I was the only person who could be there for her, because  _ you  _ ran away.  _ You _ were a coward. Now you’re back, talking about  _ faking her death _ , and she’s right back to where she was and I don’t think she can do it again if you leave.”   
He takes a breath and turns the car off. Head resting back against the seat.    
“This isn’t some movie or fairytale, Asra, this is my sister’s life. You don’t know her like I do, you will never know her like I do. You come barging in, and sure you  _ care _ , but you don’t understand. Then you run away.” 

No one knew them like they knew each other. No one knew how to be afraid like them. How to tiptoe around the house like they had to. How to avoid their parents’ anger and be the  _ good  _ child they wanted them to be. Quiet, unnoticed. They only ever had each other.   
Until Asra came into Eos’ life.

When they go back to the apartment, the first thing Asra does is go to hold Eos. Hyperion watches as Asra buries his face in her hair, he holds her tight and Hyperion can see the tremble in Asra’s hands.   
Not fear for himself.   
Fear for her. 

He turns away and goes to grab a bottle for the baby.   
Until Asra came back into Eos’ life, they only had each other.

..

He can just picture it.    
Eos alone in a dirty bed, her brother nearby to help her.   
He can picture it so well, the amount of pain she’d be in. Her tears, the risk of her  _ dying _ there because she’d been so determined to bring  _ their  _ baby into the world, only to lose them moments later. 

He holds her close and breathes her in. Her scent of rose perfume and cinnamon, face buried into the softness of her hair. Her dye is fading and all it brings to mind is how  _ he _ used to be the one that helped her maintain it, always knowing when to buy the dye without her asking. She brings him home flowers and his favourite tea and they  _ always _ knew what they other needed without asking.

She loved him. She  _ loves _ him still.

She is so beautiful. She is bright with her happiness and he doesn’t ever want her to be sad again. Not because of him. Especially not because of him.

There’s something that pulls his memory back when he thinks of the drive he took with Hyperion. The cigarette burn itches behind his ear.    
His eyes go dark when he thinks back before all of this.    
He’s seen Hyperion before. 

He’s quite aware of what Hyperion is willing to do. 

He squeezes her, smiling at the familiar whine she gives whenever he holds her a little too tight. He wonders if she knew. Knows.    
If he went on his own whim or not.   
He pulls her hair back behind her shoulder, he should go out again and buy her more dye, and kisses her neck. Her shoulder. He wonders if he did that the night she got pregnant, if it was her hands around his throat or if he was the one driving her to tears from overstimulation. If they’d taken it slow that night or if he railed and pounded her into the mattress. 

His teeth graze her neck and despite the months he spent away he can tell she knows what he’s thinking.

“ _ Now _ ?” She whispers to him, voice filled with complete disbelief. “You’re the worst, go sit down. Go!” She twists around in his arms whacks his chest, trying to shoo him away. He tugs her closer, just an inch or two. 

“Later?”

She pushes him back, walking him backwards towards the living room. He holds her hands to his chest with a grin and it is so  _ easy  _ to slip back into how they’d been before. He wants her thighs around his head, her hands in his hair. 

“Sit  _ down _ .” She pushes him down onto the couch and he can only grin after her while she heads for the kitchen. He makes eye contact with Hyperion through the doorway, expression sobering when he sees the look on Hyperion’s face.   
Contempt. 

He doesn’t want him here. But he has no choice. 


	2. Alternative ending

The carpet is stained brown and the bedsheets scratch and itch. This is not the place for this, but it is safe and away from prying eyes.

His hand is crushed in her grip, she’s sweating. The bedsheet beneath her damp, she’s in pain. More pain than he thought she’d be and he can’t  _ help _ her with that. She pants up towards the ceiling, it’s been hours now and she’s  _ tired _ . His heart constricts, she deserves more.

“I won’t make it,” She says, a pained groan after her words. He’s convinced she’ll break his fingers, he can’t help her. He doesn’t have the medicine to help her pain. And no way to give it to her without risking giving her too much. “I can’t do it.”

“Don’t talk like that,” His free hand grips onto her knee, the baby is almost there. He thinks. He’s tried to learn everything he can but he feels no matter what it’ll never be enough. His heart flips at her words. Why does she have to say it, when that is all he’s worrying about? “You know you’re going to make it, you  _ know  _ you are.” Someone else should be with her. A doctor, the man who  _ fucked  _ her and got her in this mess.  “Just  _ breathe _ okay?” She’s crying, she sounds like she’s in more pain than she should be but he doesn’t  _ know. _

He sees her mouth a name belonging to someone who isn’t coming, busies himself with warm towels and making sure the prepared water is still at the right temperature before he loses his cool. 

_ He’s not coming, Eos _ , he wants to say, he wants to scream at him for leaving her like this. He didn’t know, but that wasn’t an  _ excuse _ to him. 

His grip tightens, he can’t think of that now. 

The baby comes, and he’s so  _ relieved _ . He wraps them up in a warm towel, wipes their head clean with a damp one. They’re so  _ small _ , it doesn’t feel right for them to be this small. He stands up, away from the bed. Turning his back to Eos so she doesn’t see him cut and tie the umbilical cord. 

They’re so small, and they have dark hair. The same dark hair every Dogmatiko has, not uncommon but it feels  _ good  _ for them to not have that white hair. To not have that marker of them being  _ his _ . He hasn’t seen their eyes yet, but he hopes that, despite the danger, they’re a Dogmatiko through and through. 

“Eos, Eos, you did so  _ good _ ,” he says to her over his shoulder, not looking away from the baby. Their little fists waving about in the air, as angry as Eos likes to act. They open their mouth and yell, and it’s  _ beautiful _ . Alive, healthy, loud, loud, loud. “Eos, you- Eos?”

He turns around.

She’s not moving, when did she stop moving? Her eyes are open, she’s just staring at the ceiling. Her chest does not rise and fall with her breathing, she does not move. Does not blink. Did he not notice? How did he not notice? Why didn’t he  _ notice _ ?

He turns around.

The baby grabs at the loose hair that had come out of his bun, tugs and  _ tugs _ . He doesn’t react, blood running cold as he stares at the bed. Where blood stains the sheets, where dark hair lies sweaty, tangled, spread out on pillows.

He turns around.

His chest inflates with a scream, a yell, a cry that doesn’t come out. His hands grow clammy and his vision tunnels. Focusing only on the still figure on the bed. 

“ _ Eos?! _ ” He lurches forward then, towards the bed. Places the baby in the crook of the arm at her side. Places his hands together and pumps down on her chest, one, two, three. “ _ Eos?! _ ” Again, one, two, three. He holds her nose and forces her mouth open to blow air into it. Pumps against her sternum again. She’s not responding, why is she not responding? 

This can’t be happening. 

“Eos?  _ Eos? Eosphorus fucking Dogmatiko, wake fucking up! _ ” 

He wants to scream right into her ear. This isn’t funny, why is she doing this? Why won’t she just reply to him, why won’t she move? Why won’t she, why won’t she, why won’t she.

The baby starts to cry, and he realises then that she’s just not going to wake up.

He picks the baby up, swaddles them in a towel and holds them to his chest. This couldn’t be happening. This  _ shouldn’t _ be happening. They knew it was risky, they knew this wasn’t the place, that she should have gotten a doctor but it wasn’t  _ safe _ too.   
And she died anyway. 

That wasn’t fair.   
Weren’t they the same? This shouldn’t be happening, that is his  _ sister _ . His twin, the only other person in the world who is ever going to know what it is like to be  _ him _ , and vice versa.    
It wasn’t fair.   
She shouldn’t have had to go through this. This pregnancy, this birth, she shouldn’t have had to of  _ died _ for it. Not when the last goddamn name she said was that  _ fucking  _ son of a whore bastard.

He reaches out and closes her eyes. 

She’ll get cold eventually.    
He can’t leave her here. He turns away.

There’s a provided cot in the closet, he digs it out and places the baby in there for now and starts to gather the things they’d collected.    
Eos’ letters for them, envelopes for their birthdays and every Christmas they’d ever have.    
‘ _ For my baby _ ,’ written on each one, written in the best handwriting she could muster. Slowly done, painstakingly so and he’d laughed at her for it at the beginning. She had too.

He picks up the first envelope, from the bedside table, and starts to cry.   
Sinking down to the floor, back pressed against the bed he covers his mouth with a hand. Trying to be quiet but he can’t stop himself from sobbing. Face glistening and wet with tears, body shaking. He can’t stand up, he can’t look behind him at her corpse or at the letter or at himself or at her baby or  _ anything _ . 

He takes in a huge breath, it is a rattling sound as he chokes back a sob. Hands running through his hair, pulling more strands out of the bun. His chest hurts, eyes sting. He can’t stop crying.

This wasn’t fair. She didn’t deserve this. She deserved to be loved by the person she loved, to have that person care enough to stay and not leave her behind. She deserved to have that person there when she had their child, and to be able to give birth in a  _ hospital _ . Where people could’ve saved her, where they wouldn’t have gotten distracted. 

He killed her.

_ He  _ killed her, him, Hyperion, her fucking  _ brother  _ killed her.   
He should have noticed, he should have paid attention when she said she wouldn’t make it. He should have taken her to a hospital anyway and faced the consequences himself if their parents found out. He should have taken all the punishment it’d accrue her instead of thinking they could do this on their own. 

He should have tracked Asra down and brought him here, not just found his address so he could send a baby and some fucking  _ letters _ to him.

He doesn’t stop crying, but he swallows his sobs when the baby cries out again. Looking for something, someone. Their mother.   
She’s gone.

Gone.

He stands back up, he can’t look at the bed, and gathers the rest of the letters. Puts them in his bag, collects the baby.    
He reaches down into the crib as they open their eyes.   
Vibrant purple. The eyes of their father. 

He wants to runaway, wants to raise them himself. The last remnant of his sister besides himself. He doesn’t want to be  _ alone _ .   
His parents will find them, and they’ll know. 

He picks them up and holds them tight to his chest. They are so small, too small. Everything risked for this little thing.   
Eos would say it was worth it.    
She wouldn’t hold a single grudge against anyone. Because she’d be so damn happy to just see this baby.

She didn’t even get to see them. 

He tries not to sob again, but tears are still streaming down. He puts the baby down again, now that they’re settled again. He can’t leave them in the car while he… Handles Eos. he’ll come back.

He turns to the bed, and wraps her up in the sweaty and blood sheets,  _ “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, _ ” she deserves better but it’s all he has. He can’t let anyone see her body, he can’t let anyone know.    
He carries her out of the room, runs down to the parking lot.   
He puts her in the boot of the car. Then heads back up to the room. Gathers the bag of letters, the baby, the gasoline.    
He’d intended to just burn the sheets, instead he pours it all over the room lights a trail out of the room.

He lights it and runs for the car. 

In a few hours, he’s hidden Eos’ body away somewhere cold so he can bury her properly and is touching down across the country to deliver a baby to an ungrateful fuck that lead to the death of his sister.   
_ He killed her, Hyperion killed her, he didn’t pay close enough attention, this is all his fault _ . 

He has a fake birth certificate stuffed into his bag. A baby sleeping on his chest.    
They are everything, all he has left, and he has to give them away.

He steals a car and drives to the address he’d found, Asra’s last known residence. And judging by the look of the place, his current residence.    
It had a nice picket fence, and he feels his throat tighten and eyes sting again. Eos would’ve loved this place, she’d of wanted flowers in the front yard and cacti. Succulents in the windows, a mural on the outside. Something pretty, splashes of colour. She’d want to wake up in the morning with Asra’s arms around her and a baby in the cot near them. Her dumb cat meowing at three AM and Asra’s stupid snake she’s always going on about sleeping under her heat lamp. 

She’d of loved this place. Would’ve loved to play suburban housewife and then shock the neighbours with her rough as guts attitude.    
She’d love to be normal, and then extraordinary. 

He walks over, a basket at his hip. Bag on his shoulders, baby held against his chest.   
He crosses the street and thinks of all the birthdays Eos will miss. All the stories he won’t be able to tell them of her.

Of how she’d once evaded police by jumping between  _ several _ buildings. Of how she’d tricked everyone, of how she would  _ sing _ and paint and love with her whole heart. Of how she could take someone twice her size down in less than five seconds. Of how she was never a natural at anything but kept practicing until she was. How she’d found her cat in a dumpster and had been inseparable since. 

He’ll never be able to tell them a thing. And he doubted Asra would give her a shred of good credit either. 

For all Hyperion knew, Eos was just Asra’s little whore with a job he didn’t like and abandoned. Only to pump out a baby a few months later.

( _ He knew that couldn’t have been how he thought of her, but it kept him from waiting at the door to tell him the news himself. _ ) 

He places the baby in the basket, they’re asleep now. Places their birth certificate in there with them and leaves the bag that holds the rest of her letters.   
He wants to keep one, to have some of her words left for him. 

He doesn’t even look at them.

He knocks on the door and disappears almost too late. Watches in the dark as a sleepy looking white haired man opens the door, picks up the baby. Confused, takes them in as his expression turns to shock. 

That’s when he leaves and heads back home.

The night isn’t stormy or even drizzling when he grabs Eos’ body to bury her.    
He brushes out her hair first. She’d want to look her best. He doesn’t know how to apply all of her makeup, but he knows just enough that she looks decent.   
She likes to be dramatic with her makeup, but he doesn’t know how to do that. So simple will have to do.

They don’t have a family mausoleum, and he wouldn’t put her in there anyway. But he drives somewhere out of town, her covered up in the back seat and a lightning rod he hasn’t unpacked on the floor. 

He drives out of town, his vision is blurry with tears but he keeps going.

He finds a nice spot, drives off road and finds a nice hill. 

It isn’t particularly special, but he knows he’ll find it again. They used to come here all the time once they got their licenses. It was somewhere far away. 

He starts digging. 

It’s misty at best, and he curses the weather for not being rain and storm and lightning. Like she deserves. She deserves that wild weather, deserves the uncontrollable nature of it. 

Instead fog rolls over the ground and he keeps digging. When it’s deep enough he lowers her into it. Uncovers her face.   
He doesn’t have any words. Nothing to makeup for his lack of diligence, his lack of care. He killed her, he knows that. He should’ve taken her to a doctor, asked for a housecall. Killed them after if he had to. 

Instead he tried to do it all himself. 

He starts shoveling dirt into the grace and doesn’t stop even when he’s covered in it and his face is wet from tears again. His chest tight, throat tighter. 

He puts the lightning rod in and goes home. 

..

He drives to find her. He tried calling, tried writing. Never got a reply. 

He isn’t prepared to do this. He doesn’t know a single thing that’s going on. He never wanted this, at least not  _ alone _ . He’d never planned for it, not even when they were together. And now she thought she could just,  _ leave _ the baby on his  _ doorstep _ ? Not offer the courtesy of a choice? Of letting the baby be raised by their own  _ mother _ ?

The lights aren’t on in the apartment when he pulls up. The baby laughs in the booster seat, shaking around a rattle he’d bought for them on the drive over. They’d tossed all the others somewhere and he hadn’t been able to find them yet. 

There’s a sinking feeling in his stomach. But he gets out the car anyway, picks up the baby and walks into the building. He takes the elevator up to their old floor and walks down the corridor.

There’s the smallest sliver of light on the inside, he knocks on the door and waits.

A man opens the door, taller than him. He looks just like Eos, hair black and blue and pulled up into a messy bun. A lesser person might think he was intimidating.    
He must be a brother, or a cousin. Which means he is also part of The Family. Their parents must be too.

Eos does not appear at his side. 

He does not hear her voice and he waits, in stunned silence, for her to appear. She always comes to the door when people knock, even if she doesn’t get there first.   
Why isn’t she at the door?

“What are you doing here?” the man’s voice is raspy, overused or rough from something. His eyes rimmed red. His bad feeling increases, dread rising. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“Where’s- Where’s- Where is she?” he can’t say her name, he should be angry at her and he  _ is _ . But he’s worried too. Where is she?    
The man grabs his arm and pulls him inside as the baby starts a crying spell, Asra bouncing them in his arms to try and stave it off. 

“What do you want, Asra,” The door shuts behind them. He knows his name, knows him by sight or because he has the baby. So Eos must have told people. He hadn’t had anyone follow or come after him, so how many people knew? Just this man?

“Where’s Eos? I- I need answers, I can’t just-” His head feels like it’s spinning, there’s so many words he wants to say and not enough time or breath in his lungs to do it. He wants to chew her out, ask her if she knew when he left, why she didn’t call him. Why she didn’t wait at the door. Why she thought he’d be capable of this.

“She’s dead.” 

The apartment is silent. And for once Asra notices how bare it is.   
All of her things are gone, and the things he left behind too. There’s a few boxes, remnants or things to be tossed out. Most of her furniture was gone. The apartment just the bare bones, a skeleton of their home. 

She’s dead, he’d said.

But that wasn’t possible. It hadn’t even been a month since she delivered the baby to him, surely she couldn’t have died in that time? Surely not. That couldn’t be true.

He feels numb.    
Like it hasn’t quite hit him yet.   
It couldn’t be true.

“What? H- What?  _ How? _ ”

No. No, no, no, no. It couldn’t be true, that couldn’t be right.   
He’d spent  _ years _ trying to find her, he’d spent time chasing after her when he didn’t even know she was the Nightingale. She had never gotten caught, no one had come close.    
She couldn’t be dead, who possibly could have killed her?

The man before him swallows, he should look intimidating but he just looks… Sad. Tired. 

“When she had the baby. Sorry, looks like you can’t just get a refund for them.” 

She wasn’t the one that delivered the baby to him.   
She died before she could.    
Did she get to see them first, say their name? Hold them even for a little while? 

He opens his mouth, as if he’s about to say something but no sound comes out.

He looks down at the annoyed bundle in his arms, all that’s left of her. The one last thing she made.    
She’d painted things for him before, on expensive canvas with expensive paint and he’d  _ loved _ them.    
He didn’t even take any with him when he left. He left everything behind, all the pieces he had of her. Now he didn’t even know where they were. If they’d been tossed out, or put in storage or… He didn’t know. He didn’t know what happened to them. 

His words don’t even entirely register. A ‘refund’? Is that what he thought he came here for?   
( _ Hadn’t he? It wasn’t fair she’d expected him to just look after their baby, it wasn’t fair after all those years of lying and hiding things from him. This wasn’t right of her. To expect this of him. _

_ He looks at the baby in his arms and knows he doesn’t want to give them up anyway. _ ) 

“You- I didn’t come here- I mean,” There’s too many words trying to make their way out at once, he feels confused. This couldn’t be real, right? This had to be a joke, some sick joke. She had to hiding around the corner, not wanting to see him. He walks forward, passed the man and further into the apartment. Looking around corners. She had to be here right? She wouldn’t have- she wouldn’t have left him like that. She couldn’t have left him alone. 

“She’s not here,” His voice is hoarse. There’s nothing to follow that, just silence. She’s not here, she’s dead and buried somewhere. Probably in a ditch, somewhere no one will know it’s her. She deserves better than that. She hurt him but she deserves  _ better  _ than that. She deserves a monument, a fucking statue. Something better. “ _ Habibti _ …”

The first time he called her that, he’d been home late. Trying to gather any information he could on the Nightingale. He’d been tired, sore. He’d just wanted to fall into bed and pretend that he’d already finished the assignment so he could  _ relax _ again.    
She’d cooked dinner later, timed it so it’d be warm and fresh for him when he got home. Ran him a bath, he’d wanted to just sleep but she made him cool and calm down first. 

She’d knelt by the bath with him, and held his hand.   
And he’d called her habibti. 

He hadn’t said the word since he left her.    
Hadn’t thought of it. 

He clutches the baby tighter, she was gone. She really was. And he was alone. 

“You should go,” There’s a tense air around the man who looks so  _ much _ like his habibti. He doesn’t like Asra, he wants him to go. Does he blame him for it?   
He blames himself too. 

He doesn’t say anything, just walks towards the door.   
He doesn’t even have any photos of her anymore.

“Hey.”

The man opens one of the boxes, pulls out a photo frame.    
Him and Eos, one of their first couple of dates. Her smiling, happy and healthy. Alive. She’d been so beautiful that day, funny and warm. He’d kissed her and lost himself in her.   
If he’d only known. 

If he’d just…  _ Known _ . 

He’d of arrested her, she’d be in jail but  _ alive _ . She’d be alive and maybe if he’d known so early he wouldn’t care but  _ this  _ version of him  _ cares _ . He cares so much and she’s  _ gone _ . 

He takes the photo and leaves. Too numb to offer the man visits to the baby, too lost to even think of what he’s going to do. 

He sits in his car.    
The baby still in his arms.

That is when he starts to cry.    
It shakes through his body, large teardrops making their way down his face. Quick shallow breaths making their way in and out he didn’t  _ want _ this. He wanted her alive, healthy, he wanted to come back and have answers not be faced with her  _ death _ . 

She’d died just so he could have their baby right now. 

He doesn’t even want to know the details. He doesn’t want to know a thing. 

He twists and puts the baby in the booster seat and begins the drive home. He doesn’t know how he’ll do it, how he’ll manage to raise their baby and know Eos should be there right beside them both.   
But he’ll do it. 

He’ll do it. 


End file.
